St. Simons Island coming under benevolent siege

By TERRY DICKSONThe Times-Union,

ST. SIMONS ISLAND -- It is possible for combat veterans on the barrier islands to have flashbacks without leaving home.

With the G-8 Summit beginning next week, signs of increased security are making St. Simons look more like Fort Simons. Concrete barriers virtually surround a big hangar at McKinnon-St. Simons Airport that will serve as an interagency command center. Elsewhere, National Guard troops man radar equipment and missile batteries behind coils of barbed concertina wire and technicians were unloading equipment Tuesday at Strickland Auditorium at Epworth By the Sea, where the FBI will be headquartered during the summit.

An Avenger short range air defensive battery sits in the parking lot of Clam Creek docks on Jekyll Island Tuesday. The Sydney Lanier Bridge is in the background. The battery is in place for next week's G-8 summit on neighboring Sea Island. CHRIS VIOLA/The Times-Union

All the military hardware and heavy police activity is in place to protect President Bush and other world leaders as they meet for the annual economic summit on Sea Island for three days beginning Tuesday.

T.J. Deyette has watched the gradual buildup at the St. Simons airport from his home across the road. Deyette figures federal agents could be gazing back at him.

"On top of that pole,'' he said pointing to the tallest of more than a dozen new communications towers around the hangar, "that's a camera.''

The ditch across the road where he walks his dogs is lined with heavy concrete barriers like those used to divide highways. Tuesday morning, drivers of Publix Super Markets trucks dropped four trailers along the fence. A refrigeration unit hummed on one, leading Deyette to opine they're loaded with food for security forces.

Deyette said he hasn't been bothered by all the security measures and finds it interesting.

Some barriers were sitting stacked waiting for placement, including some at the Hampton Inn on the island, while plenty of others show what life will be like in the coming days. Anyone visiting the Glynn County Police Department's island precinct at the airport now has to drive a serpentine route around orange barriers.

Barriers are also in place outside a BellSouth facility near Sea Island, but they blend in with the landscape having been hidden beneath brown slipcovers.

The tightened security at Epworth compelled James Sanders and Janice Clotfelter to take an unplanned but pleasant walk.

With the southern entrance blocked, Sanders and Clotfelter parked outside the Methodist center's gate and walked a few hundred yards to an administrative office.

Both are Methodists -- retired from the pulpit, Sanders is still in the ministry -- and both say they love Epworth. They plan to recite their vows in a short ceremony in Epworth's Lovely Lane Chapel, a church so popular the couple had to reschedule their mid-afternoon wedding until evening, she said.

After a forkliftrolled past, Sanders said, "I think if the church can serve the public they ought to do it.''

But the thought of gun-toting G-men filling Epworth makes Clotfelter a little uneasy.

"It's ironic to me. It's not the peaceful place we know, but it's the world we live in today,'' she said.

Epworth is far from unique in its conversion to an armed camp.

Visitors to Jekyll Island's Clam Creek picnic area and fishing pier found a short-range Avenger missile battery manned by the Mississippi National Guard.

Dij and Kim Evatt and their 13-month-old son, Boo, took a bike ride to Clam Creek during a two-day stopover on their trip from Atlanta to Florida.

"You notice them, but they're not stopping anything from happening. I wouldn't even call it tight security,'' Kim Evatt said.

The Evatts said they were surprised to see all the cars with government tags at a Jekyll Island hotel but so far none of the officers had caused them any inconvenience.

Shooing a deer fly off his bare leg, Dij Evatt said, "The flies are worse than the government people.''

There are also mobile missile launchers on the Sea Island Causeway, at the airport and along the St. Simons causeway.

There are signs, as in posted warnings, that things will tighten up in the coming days. Last week, motorists along the F.J. Torras Causeway to St. Simons saw newly erected signs covered with black plastic sheeting. The wind unveiled the signs early, ripping away the plastic and showing the warning, "No stopping, standing or parking on causeway.''

National Guard convoys of Humvees and trucks began rumbling across the causeway Tuesday with more to come.

What Glynn County residents are seeing now is just a taste of life in the coming days. The Secret Service has said it will begin implementing portions of its security plans this week and will tighten it progressively.

Residents have been warned to expect delays up to an hour but promised that their lives and property will be protected.